aside White Evangelicals Who Back President Trump Are Pushing To Turn California Red

The son of Billy Graham, Franklin Graham is nothing like his Father. His Father recognized that his calling was to bring peoples to follow a life of faith. He would never have instructed peoples to vote for republican party candidates. Franklin Graham with other Evangelical leaders have been leading their church members to vote for the likes of President Donald Trump. This is partly why 80% of White Evangelicals voted for our 45th US president which comprise about 35% of his base.

Thus there are people who call on the name of God who are supporting a leader who has little moral character. We have a man at the helm who suffers from the impulses of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and who exhibits a total lack of integrity and decency. He is what I would NOT want by son to become or to view as a leader.

The following narrative details how crass these Evangelical leaders are in pushing their followers to vote for republican party candidates.

Here’s the rest of the story….

On May 27, 2018, Elizabeth Diaz of the New York Times penned the following report, “The Evangelical Fight to Win Back California”

Excerpts:

“As the primary approaches, Franklin Graham brings Jesus — and a conservative political message — to a state with a vast pool of evangelical voters.”

“Franklin Graham stood in a packed locker room at the Rose Bowl, surrounded by fellow evangelists, pastors, and his top Los Angeles donors. It was two weeks before the California primary, and Mr. Graham was urging them to take a stand against their state’s “blue wall.”

“The blue wall of California, Mr. Graham told the gathering, represents secular values that have taken root on the country’s west coast.”

“Progressive?” he went on, “That’s just another word for godless.” Now is the time for churches to “suck it up” and vote.

“We’re tired of being stepped on,” Felix Martin del Campo, a board member of Samaritan’s Purse, Mr. Graham’s international humanitarian organization, said in an interview as the meeting ended and worship music played. “Only as we change the heart of the people of California can California go red again.”

BILLY GRAHAM/ FRANKLIN GRAHAM

“Mr. Graham, the son of the late Billy Graham and one of the leading figures in evangelical Christianity, is going straight for that heart.”

“Mr. Graham is leading a three-bus caravan up the middle of the state, one of the biggest political battlegrounds this year, to urge evangelicals to vote and to win California for Jesus. The two week tour ends on the day of the primary, June 5.”

“Along the way — at a park in Escondido, outside the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, on the beaches of Oxnard, at the fairgrounds of Fresno and Modesto — Mr. Graham is hosting 10 campaign-style rallies, complete with highly-produced videos, top Christian singers and laser light shows, to urge evangelicals to join his mission.”

FRANKLIN GRAHAM

“That mission, Mr. Graham says, is about faith and Jesus, but the parallel political message is just as resounding: Support candidates who will advance the socially conservative causes dear to many evangelicals — especially opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage — and get to the polls.”

“Don’t be afraid to preach about it, Mr. Graham told the pastors. “Lose your tax exempt status; the progressives want to take it away anyway,” he said.”

“Saving California, religiously or politically, might seem an audacious goal. Mr. Graham wants nothing less than to reform what he sees as an increasingly heathen state.”

“Though the state has one of the highest percentages of religiously unaffiliated adults, the fast growing religious group in the country, that largely blue sea is dotted with evangelical islands that are largely red. One in five adults in the state are evangelical Christians, according to the Pew Research Center, and there are more megachurches in California than in any other state.”

“And while 26 percent of national voters in 2016 were white born-again Christians, according to exit polls, just 13 percent of California voters were, creating an opportunity for Mr. Graham and other conservative leaders to add to their electoral base and possibly someday swing one of the most liberal states in the country more toward purple.”

“Finances play a role, too. After Mr. Graham’s home state of North Carolina, California is the second largest donor base for Samaritan’s Purse and his other organization, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.”

“Many of Mr. Graham’s supporters in California are frustrated with their state legislature’s Democratic supermajority. Last Sunday, the day Mr. Graham began his bus trip, a large Los Angeles church on the border of an open House seat ended its services early and directed its 3,000 congregants to write letters protesting a state assembly bill that would prohibit conversion therapy, intended to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, as a form of consumer fraud. In 2012, California passed a law restricting the practice on minors.”

“Even Republican political strategists and party officials doubt that Republicans could win top statewide offices like governor or senator in California this fall. The party is vulnerable in as many as seven House districts currently held by Republicans but which Hillary Clinton won in 2016. As the Republican base in California shrinks, religious conservatives become an even more important part of the party’s coalition, said Dan Schnur, a longtime Republican consultant in California who is now an independent.”

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President Trump won the 2016 election thanks in large part to a groundswell of support from white evangelicals. That same year, Mr. Graham held rallies in all 50 state capitals to urge Christians to vote.CreditRozette Rago for The New York Times

“It is going to be impossible for them to save those House seats without significant religious conservative turnout,” he said. “Along with his other goals, Graham is smart enough to understand that turning out his strongest supporters on election day could be the difference between Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Speaker Nancy Pelosi.”

“Mr. Graham’s supporters see the connection between evangelism and political activism, even if Mr. Graham walks the line. On the lawn outside the Rose Bowl, as churches dropped off busloads of people for his second rally, attendees spoke freely of a recent memory. In 2016, Mr. Graham held rallies in all 50 state capitals to urge Christians to vote. Donald J. Trump won the White House that year, defying all predictions, in large part thanks to a groundswell of white evangelical turnout.”

“Maybe, they hoped, the 2018 midterms in California could produce a similar surprise.”

“That’s what we are praying for,” said Peggy Brown, who runs a Christian drug rehabilitation program and who traveled to nine of Mr. Graham’s rallies in 2016. She teared up. “We saw a move of God with Christians. It gives me chills just to talk about it.”

10 comments

Graham and his ilk survive by having the masses donate great sums to his coffers. He can say throw away your tax exemptions and still come out smelling like a rose, the 2017 tax bill favours people like him.
But what happens if his flocks lose the churches they built, if their leaders can’t afford to be paid as they would like to become accustomed. Going political hurts the little guys, but Graham doesn’t care about them. As long as he is living high off the hog!
Religion is just a vehicle for him. A Rolls Royse, not a Ford or Chevie. He might believe what he preaches, but I doubt it. I dare him to live as some of his poorest parishioners have to live. He would never survive.

Eventually, the Evangelicals are going to get the picture that their rights to practice their faith is protected until it starts to interfere with others rights to practice their faith in the way that they see fit.

In my mind, those who follow the likes of Franklin Graham are being led astray by someone who supports a president who is a chronic liar, racist, misogynist, xenophobic, bully-in chief, climate change denier, or everything that Jesus would have denounced.

There is a need for other religious leaders to challenge the likes of Franklin Graham.

Progressives is just another word for ‘godless’??? Is it, then, ‘godless’ to want to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry, and that everyone has access to health care? You are quite right when you say that Franklin is not his father! I am not at all religious, but I still had respect for Billy Graham … I think the man did a lot of good in the world. His son? He is a bigot and a greedy one at that. He has found his ‘golden goose’ and is milking it for all that it is worth. I seriously hope that the majority of Californians have better sense than to be swayed by Franklin Graham’s b.s. These people make me sick. And that woman in the forefront of that picture where Trump is touching the baby? She looks for all the world like raving lunatic! Sigh … the world is full of them.
Hugs!!!

It looks as if the democrats, the “Never Trumpers,” the independents and the republicans who decide to vote against a Trump-like republican candidate had better never enter the Church of Franklin Graham as we would not be welcome. This is not a church, it is a cult.

But they are a force that needs to be reckoned with as they comprise at least 35% of President Trump’s base.

We do need religious leaders who shun racism to step forward to counter the likes of Franklin Graham.